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I'm sure that you will meet people who will happily share a table - AZ passengers generally are very friendly. Our experience has been that it is not difficult to add one or two people to an existing reservation - the staff go out of their way to accommodate. Eating at the bar is always an option as well if you want to go to Prime C and can't find anyone. The staff at the bar love to chat!

"I make my own mind up about someone when I meet them, not rely on tittle tattle on an anonymous message board such as this." I'm not going to belabor this point, but whether good or bad, you have still inserted your opinion. Some of us have a different opinion and are entitled to express it as well. And, to go further, you compared her to someone else - someone who is in a league of their own! Unless you are a full time job, there is a lot more to being a HD!

"I think it's Captain Kresimir and Tatiana Morello as HD (who is excellent by the way, if you haven't sailed with her. Another Heike Berdos)" From one of your posts. So, let me get this straight, you're allowed to offer your opinion and others are not - got it!

We were on in February and completely agree about it being a very different experience. The Hotel Director, Tatiana, should be demoted or fired in my opinion. She should never have been put in that position as she obviously does not have the experience to handle the job. And, it just flows down from there. Because she was invisible, the rest of the officers felt that it was okay to be invisible as well. Ryszard came on for our second cruise of our b2b and things changed dramatically. He told me that the first thing that he told all of the officers was that they had to be out of their cabins by 7am and mingling with passengers. You could tell that a few of them were not happy about it but complied.

Hi Laurie - sorry to hear that you are having an issue. Was your B2B on one reservation number or two?

Just want to point out that you are in Japan in the spring and many people have springtime allergies. I'm sure that there are quite a few people going who should be wearing a mask or should be staying on the ship because they are sick with a cold, etc. However, there are many people, my DH for example, who suffer from springtime allergies. We were on in March when things were just starting to bud and flower. He had to take his meds as his allergies started when we hit our first Japanese port.

Yes, that's Rumbi! So nice and what a beautiful voice.

Thanks for your reviews. Was the wonderful lady singer named Rumbi? She is fabulous!

Hi - could you tell us what you are seeing for the Journey? Thanks.

Yes, it's very apparent that the "new" ones are not getting the training they so desperately need.

Sounds as though it is. We had the tale of two cruises - one without him and one with him. What a difference! The first HD definitely needs more training. Ryszard is the best!

The hotel director who was on for our first cruise, and I believe on Pirate Wife's cruise, was the worst one we have ever had. Consequently, we found that other senior officers were very lax in their duties as well. This attitude flowed from the top down. We had never seen anything like it on an Azamara cruise. When Ryszard came onboard things changed instantly. He was sent to Journey for only 1 1/2 months and then is going back to Quest, so you can draw your own conclusions.

We were on the same cruise as Phil as well as the previous one. Ryszard was the new hotel manager on this one, Stephen was the CD on both. The second cruise was much better than the first with Ryszard on board.

I think that which officers you have also determines whether the onboard experience is more Azamara or not. We are recently off b2b where we had two different Hotel Directors. These were our 19th and 20th cruises with AZ. The first cruise was nothing like we have ever experienced - zero to little officer visibility, passengers being allowed to physically assault crew members with no officer stepping in, lack of onboard festivities, and other weird occurrences. I requested a meeting with the hotel director to discuss and I never received a response. For the second cruise a more experienced hotel director came onboard. What a difference! Suddenly the officers were everywhere (including greeting us as we disembarked each day), there were multiple onboard experiences (including pop up events that seemingly were pulled together at the last minute but were wonderful), and the crew was much happier. One crew member telling me that they now felt like someone had their back. The vibe between the two cruises was completely different. My feeling is that having lost some officers post-covid, Miami put people in positions when they aren't ready. I think that this is one of the reasons that there seem to be inconsistencies between ships and sometimes between cruises on the same ship!

We were just on a b2b from Perth to Tokyo on the Journey. We had two fabulous lecturers on both cruises - destination and enrichment. All lectures very well attended.